Emily Mortimer And Bill Nighy Star In Trailer For Isabel Coixet’s THE BOOKSHOP – Opening In St. Louis On August 31

Opening on August 24 is director Isabel Coixet’s THE BOOKSHOP. The film will debut in St. Louis on August 31.

England, 1959. Free-spirited widow Florence Green (Emily Mortimer) risks everything to open a bookshop in a conservative East Anglian coastal town. While bringing about a surprising cultural awakening through works by Ray Bradbury and Vladimir Nabokov, she earns the polite but ruthless opposition of a local grand dame (Patricia Clarkson) and the support and affection of a reclusive book loving widower (Bill Nighy).

As Florence’s obstacles amass and bear suspicious signs of a local power struggle, she is forced to ask: is there a place for a bookshop in a town that may not want one?

Based on Penelope Fitzgerald’s acclaimed novel and directed by Isabel Coixet (Learning to Drive), The Bookshop is an elegant yet incisive rendering of personal resolve, tested in the battle for the soul of a community.

Coixet’s resume is quite extensive. Among her many films is 2008’s Elegy. Based on Philip Roth’s novel The Dying Animal, it was shot in Vancouver and produced by Lakeshore Entertainment, with a screenplay by Nicholas Meyer, and starring Penélope Cruz and Ben Kingsley. Elegy was introduced at the 58th Berlin International Film Festival.

In 2012, she shot and produced her project, Yesterday Never Ends which premiered in the Panorama Section of the 63th edition of the Berlin International Film Festival, as well as opening the Málaga Film Festival the same year. That same year she shot Another Me, an English production written and directed by her and with Sophie Turner, Rhys Iphans and Jonathan Rhys Meyers in the cast.

In 2013 she began shooting Leaning to Drive in New York starring Sir Ben Kinglsey and Patricia Clarkson. It premiered at the Toronto Film Festival and won the Grolsch People’s Choice Award.

The director says of the main character, “The balance of this film will lie in the layers of the various skirmishes Florence must get through in her small society. Those skirmishes tally up the battles and those battles make up the war.

As we witness her establishing herself, and the decisions she makes to move forwards, we must also see the wave effect of that drop in the pond and how she affects those around her. And, although Florence does not win the war, she makes an impact on a few people that may or may not have powerful actions to take on in their own futures.

In the end is the sweet dull pain of inevitability. The fires of resistance need oxygen to survive. Water continues to flow and, as mould finds its way into a structure and tears it down, it washes away history. Each side must be vigilant in self-maintenance. The war against Florence results in nothing all that impactful. We are all human again, full “of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” Florence loses her battle, but has she inspired the next generation of warriors? My mission is to show that Florence has indeed inspired us all to take up the good fight.”